Windows 7 Frequent Blue Screens.

Hi all,

I am having LOADS of troubles with my computer. It's a machine that I built myself. I've been having all kinds of blue screens, which I never see the same 2 messages. Here are all the parts that I have:

I made sure everything was compatible before purchasing, I only started having troubles after purchasing RAM, which I thought was the problem and had G.Skill replace the entire kit, but the blue screens continue. I have also manually set the RAM settings in BIOS as G.Skill suggests in their forum: http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=7688

I have also done all Windows Updates, except for Service Pack 1, which I cannot install since it blue screens every time I try to install it (both trying to install from Windows Update and downloaded standalone installer).

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RAM isn't generic. No matter what, you purchased something that was never qualified. This is one of the reasons people pay a premium to buy from companies like HP and Dell. They actually certify and test memory. While cranking the clock too high can break any RAM, eventually, dropping it to bare minimum is no guarantee that the problem will be fixed. The clues are there ... it worked fine till you got that make/model (NOT THOSE PARTICULAR DIMMS) of memory. Take them back and get something else. Your system is unstable. I expect they will have no problem getting your money back.

never mind on my previous post .. your memory is supported on the official page. I was working from a reseller's site that didn't report the proper part#

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mgermano2Author Commented: 2012-04-04

It's all good. Either way, you're still right, it's not fully tested. And a company like G.Skill is gonna keep manufacturing RAM without fulling testing it before it leaves the factory. Right after they sent me a brand new kit manufactured just last month, one of the sticks had 10,000's of errors in memtest within seconds of running the test.

Which also reminds me I forgot to add that I have tested each stick individually with Memtest, 1 pass each, and none of the sticks I currently have gave errors in Memtest.

I've attached the 5 files for reference
The only thing I see in relation to pointing to a specific piece of software is in file 3 - AvastSvc
Have you installed Avast? What version?
Can you if possible uninstall it and see if it makes any difference?

Minidumps 1 and 2(note I've analysed the dumps in order that they happened) are referencing a 'TrustedInstall' which I think means you were installing something(could be wrong) - do you remember installing anything during the first couple of crashes?
Since Avast is mentioned its possible that install was broken and since its an antivirus package this could lead to memory related crashes/issues...1.txt2.txt3.txt4.txt5.txt

smckeown777: I just performed a fresh reload of Windows earlier this week to rule out anything OS related, and yes, there were blue screens during installs. I will try uninstalling and reinstalling avast. I didn't download the setup .exe from their website, I had a backup copy of it which possibly could have become corrupted. Thanks.

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mgermano2Author Commented: 2012-04-05

willcomp: I'd rather not underclock it if I don't have to.

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mgermano2Author Commented: 2012-04-05

2Cs: I was able to install windows updates one by one and apparently the Service pack 1 was corrupted so I deleted it from the windows update download folder and redownloaded and it worked. I am still experiencing blue screens/weird things going on. Like randomly my Google Chrome tabs will crash and I have to reload them.

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mgermano2Author Commented: 2012-04-05

To all,

It is a fresh install, all latest drivers have been installed from manufacturers website.

I enabled AHCI for my SSD to perform to its full potential and installed the latest drivers from the AMD website.

Reinstalled Avast downloaded directly from the website and still blue screens.

Ok, latest minidump is refering to NTFS.SYS which isn't a good sign, it also refers to dwm.exe which is the Windows Desktop Manager service(graphics related)

Can we back up a bit first, you have clean installed again
Don't install ANY APPS, just drivers
Get rid of Avast, we want to strip it down to the basics first
If after removing Avast it still bluescreens I'd next remove the graphics driver(based on the latest bluescreen refering to dwm.exe)
Seeing that ntfs.sys was in the loop it also could be the HD driver(AHCI you mentioned) but hard to say until we strip out things bit by bit(nightmare obviously)

Can you do this -
Clean install
No 3rd party drivers
No apps

You should not have any BSOD's at this point, then install the base drivers one at a time
Graphics driver - reboot
Other drivers - reboot(after each driver install I mean reboot)

Just out of curiosity when you installed the last time - when did you notice the first bluescreen? Had you everything installed right up to Avast before it went down?6.txt

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mgermano2Author Commented: 2012-04-05

smckeown777:

The first bluescreen was either during installing windows updates or when i was just looking at stuff on chrome (email, facebook, tumblr, etc). I can't really remember.

I probably won't be able to clean install again until the weekend, but I will start from there. Is there a particular order in which I should be installing drivers? I load the AHCI driver before windows installation, then when windows install is complete, i load the AMD chipset drivers, then graphics, then the rest.

Yes load the AHCI pre install(have to do this for the SSD obviously)
I normally work from there in this order
Chipset
Graphics
Network
Etc...

So follow this order
Chipset - reboot
Network - (I dont think this is network related so go with this 2nd) - reboot

This will allow you to get online at least - browse internet etc
Don't bother with windows updates at this point either, less the better
Also no apps of any kind

What I am looking for at this point is if there is a BSOD it must be related to one of
Chipset/Network/AHCI since we have nothing else loaded

The only thing is its hard to judge when to move to next step!! But see what happens, also before each driver install take a System restore point, least then if and when it BSOD's we can back up easily to the last working state

Once you are happy that nothing is crashing proceed with graphics - reboot
Play with it again, maybe play a video on media player or something, this will be a good test at this point

After that I think only thing left is audio - reboot
If there is a driver i am forgetting let me know
Cheers...

nobus: Yes i manually set the ram voltage to 1.5v. As i said in the original post, I did all the recommended settings from G.Skill for my Black Edition AMD cpu.

And yes, I checked the latest firmware the other day and its up to date. It arrived with the most recent firmware.

smckeown777: Strangely, I haven't gotten anymore blue screens since that last one. I loaded up my computer with every program installed and about 20 tabs on chrome and was using 4.8gb out of 16gb of ram and it was stable with bsod's since then and nothing really out of the ordinary so far. I let the programs sit running for about 5 hours with no blue screens or anything. (Videogame, microsoft office programs, webcam, chrome, ccleaner, defraggler, vlc and wmp media players, firefox, vpn, even ie *shudders*) I tried to load it up with everything I could, and so far it's been good since then. Not really sure what else I can do right now to try and replicate a blue screen.

I still recommend underclocking RAM to see if system stabilizes. That's the best way to determine if RAM is marginal.

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mgermano2Author Commented: 2012-04-06

dlethe: I am not familiar with Linux or dual-booting at all. I did not want to buy a board tester, the only thing I'd be willing to buy is different RAM, especially if I paid for DDR3 1600 and have to underclock it to DDR3 1333

willcomp: I just underclocked it to G.Skills recommended settings. 1333, 8-8-8-24, 1.5v. I am going to open every program again and see how it performs and will update.

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mgermano2Author Commented: 2012-04-06

Yay I achieved a bsod! (Wait, yay?)

It happened after underclocking the RAM and I was about half way through loading up the system with programs when it happened.

Just go to ubuntu.com. on the main page it walks you through creating a bootable USB stick. This is a 60-second operation, tops, (not allowing for download). Boot the stick, tell it you don't want to install, but just run the LINUX on the stick, then just kick off one of the icons that does disk I/O testing, go to a news site that plays videos, or even download a linux version of one of the games you like. You have not done anything that confirms whether or not the problem is even hardware or software.

dlethe: I am writing this comment from Ubuntu and have tried everything you suggested with no errors so far. I can open all preinstalled linux apps, play videos from my hard drive just fine from VLC, view youtube videos just fine, view news websites fine. I haven't played around with it too much as it seems I had to install 30 plugins for everything I wanted to do -.-

Let it run longer, 24-48 hours. Consider that the longer you run it, the more likely it is a windows problem and all the time you have been spending diagnosing hardware was a total waste of time ;)

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mgermano2Author Commented: 2012-04-07

Well everyone, I'm pretty sure I figured out the problem. And I feel ridiculously stupid for this.

My old motherboard only had 6 screws to attach the motherboard to the case and this new one has 9 screws and I didn't bother adding the extra 3. Looks like they were FAR more important than I originally thought. A really, really, really rookie mistake. 3/4 of my hard drives show SATA3 connection now when they showed SATA2 before (not sure why the SSD still shows up as SATA2, but if anyone has any tips to get it to SATA3, feel free to say so!). And so far, it overall seems much faster than before. I will do testing and opening up programs and see if anymore wonky stuff comes up in the next 24-48 hours.